I live in a rural farming/ranching area, not an especially wealthy region. We have land owners that would gladly pay more tax to better fund the fire dept. In fact they were willing to have their property tax raised to provide work comp for us until the Governor told them they could not as he would not allow any new taxes under his watch(democrat).
A tax district is the only fair way to fund a volunteer fire department. Under our system a small number of people fund the dept. (donate at fund raisers.) while a great many benefit. The road dept. buys a new grader every year and I have to beg to get a new tire for the tender.

It might be better if we all hated this job, we would not be willing to give so much.

And that is fine as long as there is no perception that those members are 'firefighters'. Having a 'finance' division of the fire company for the people who are dedicated to social and fundraising. If those tasks are critical to the operation of the department, as in some places they are, then having dedicated people to do them is not a bad thing. The problem comes in when you have members who only want to do fundraising but want to be called firefighters and put everyone at risk when they put on their gear.

They are "Social Members". If they want to fight fires, etc., they need to tell the chief that they want to go "Active". At that time they will start a 6 month probation and will be expected to attend trainings and all of the other things.
Typically around here departments have "members" and "firefighters".